News from my studio and online collections.

Week 4: 30 Faces / 30 Days

End of week 4, and two more days to go for this challenge. … Here’s this week’s pictures:

Day 22 – From the Model

Day 22 was a straightforward pose, offering a chance to work on watercolor skills.

Day 23 – From The Model

Day 23 was a skowly pose that reminded me of DaVinci’s studies of the heads of old men. The tip of the day was to try crosshatching, which put me squarely back in drawing. I hatched in pencil and in a fine eraser “pen”.

Day 24 – From the Model

Day 24: For real the model photo had his tongue sticking out! Well, I tried. But the anatomy is so off!

Day 25 – from the Model

Day 25: Back to a more normal pose. I love the challenge of the side lighting. I’m enjoying drawing and smudging with a stump. … really pleased with this one.

Day 26 – from the Model

Day 26: Combining working with the stump and crosshatching, but ..meh.

Day 26 – 2nd portrait

I was so uninspired by the day 6 model, that I had to do another picture. This is a portrait of my grand-niece also from a photo. I really like this one, even though I can see where it could be improved.

Day 27 – From the Model

Day 27: I started with graphite, changed over to watercolor pencils, made a complete mess, so I got out some old acrylic paints and painted over the mess … meh, again except there’s the start of something I like in the cheeks.

Day 28:

The tip for the day was to layer images on top of each other to get a staggered effect. Here is model photo:

SO, this was quite a challenge digitally, since I do not have Procreate [yet! I am considering this..], and I barely find my way around photoshop.

So, here’s what I did to make the two variations.

First I drew the picture with HB to 5B pencils, a stump to smudge with, and a needed eraser, and a fine point eraser.

Then I scanned it. I pasted the scanned image into word, and cropped it to an oval.

Working in word, I then made a copy, pasted the copy, and removed the background from the copy.

I cropped the copy to an oval shape. I changed the color of the copy to blue lines/white background, and made it transparent. I then used WRAP TEXT to float the copy over the original image, placing it slightly off register. I wanted it to be a much more subtle shift for each color layer, that in the original model photo. [Just enough to tease the rods and cones 😉 ]

I then copied the floated copy again, changed the color to yellow, placed it, again slightly off, and did it once more in orange. Once finished I took a screen shot.

I opened the screen shot in Photoshop, increased color saturation and played a bit with the contrast, and got image 1, below, on the right with the addition of a slight cyan tone filter and a touch of the diffuse glow filter.

Day 28 – Image #1

For image 2, below, I used the diffuse glow and film grain filters and added a slight sepia tone.

Day 28 – Image #2

Cant decide which I like best, although right now I am leaning towards image 2. Oh well,… 2 more days to go, then a little break before the March Challenge.